http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Selig-permits-A-s-to-leave-Oakland-prompts-last-5598201.php


(07-03) 11:32 PDT Oakland --

The Athletics and Oakland agreed on a last-minute deal Thursday morning after the A's owner informed city and county leaders that he had received permission from baseball commissioner Bud Selig to immediately move the team outside Oakland unless a deal was approved.

The stunning revelation was made by Athletics co-owner Lew Wolff in a 10 p.m. e-mail to officials Wednesday, in which he wrote: "I was informed tonight that Commissioner Selig, due to the possibility of not having the hearing and vote that we were purported to receive from the JPA, that we will immediately be allowed to seek a temporary or permanent location outside the city of Oakland."

The e-mail prompted city and county officials to immediately revive negotiations overnight to keep the A's in Oakland, and a new deal was approved by a 6-2 vote Thursday morning by the board of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority.

The deal is essentially the same proposal that the A's and Coliseum board made public on Tuesday - but which the Oakland City Council said it did not support.

That deal allows the team to give 2 years notice of its intent to leave Oakland but requires the team to continue paying the lease for the remainder of the 10-year term. The deal also lets the A's off the hook of making those lease payments if they move to another stadium within Oakland.

Oakland city councilman Noel Gallo, who was initially opposed to the proposed 10-year lease proposal, said city, county and baseball leaders were on the phone hammering out a deal overnight.

"I think this agreement will be fair," he said. "It might not be perfect, but I think it'll be good for Oakland and the region in the long run."

Here is a full copy of the e-mail Wolff wrote that prompted the deal:

"The A's have endeavored to make it clear that after 14 months of detailed and comprehensive negotiation with our Landlord, the JPA, that we are absolutely not interested in further negotiation. "The JPA representative, Major League Baseball and our A's organization has reached agreement and approved the fully negotiated lease.

"We believe we have an agreed lease that we were informed would be voted on by the JPA, and if passed, would be submitted to the City and County.

"No other lease negotiation entity was ever noted to us or MLB for 14 months. To characterize not looking beyond the fully negotiated lease as a negative of our 14 months of discussion is unacceptable to us and MLB. "We now find out that the city has some rule that causes even a city JPA representative that wishes to vote their beliefs, that such a decision can be altered to translate a positive vote to a negative vote. At no time over 14 months was this use of some rule ever mentioned to us. We do not wish to be involved in any aspect of local city political maneuvering.

"To suddenly try and involve us in a direction that was never once noted is absolutely unacceptable.

"We have 130 employees in Oakland and some 800 part-time union employees during the baseball season. Had we been informed of the current maneuver, we would have , regretfully, sought MLB approval to locate either on an interim or permanent basis outside the city of Oakland.

"I was informed tonight that Commissioner Selig, due to the possibility of not having the hearing and vote that we were purported to receive from the JPA, that we will immediately be allowed to seek a temporary or permanent location outside the city of Oakland.

"Our desire is to remain in Oakland under the terms that we believed we have fully and mutually agreed. And that a fair and open vote at the JPA would be conducted, and then if we have to answer any concerns at the County or city, we would do so."

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

A's should walk. That place is a joke.

And where should they go?

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

San Jose

The Giants won't let them move anywhere south of Fremont.

Anyway, Oakland seems to have resolved everything, and so the A's will stay. The Raiders, on the other hand...

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Once again, we should all be thanking Jerry for not forcing the city and state to build him a new stadium. Seriously.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Yes, thank you for being satisfied with one government-financed stadium after a mere 23 years while the Atlanta Braves were not. What a man, what a man, what a man, what a very smart man, a very very smart man.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

Somewhere that feces doesn't literally creep into the clubhouse?

The A's have been in the Bay Area for almost 50 years now and outdrew the Giants at times. Just fix the plumbing; there isn't an unoccupied market that's more lucrative than northern California.

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The A's have got to be the White Sox of the Bay Area market. I think there's games where you can literally see giant clouds of pot smoke emanating from the upper deck, which I know I've seen at the Cell a few times in my day. That's some real baseball right there, cuz it got a hell of a lot harder to smoke weed at MLB ballparks when they got rid of smoking in the concourses.

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I'd say that's fairly accurate, though I'd add that more so than the White Sox, the A's seem to have developed a peculiar nationwide cult following, whether from the Swingin' A's, the Bash Brothers, or Moneyball. Yellow-billed A's caps turn up in the darnedest places. Not that that helps them put any asses in the Oakland Coliseum, of course, which yes, does have a haze of pot smoke floating over the upper deck more often than not. Even though I don't smoke, I have to applaud the audacity and realness of it all, especially with the fancy new monument to upmarket consumption across the bay, and so I'm in no particular hurry to see the A's catch up to everyone else. Imagine if they had moved to San Jose, the Cultural Mecca of the Bay Area.

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we be the infamous: you heard of us. official queen's bridge murderers!

(word association for "the realness." you haven't lived til you've seen a polish immigrant skater kid singing this word for word stoned out of his gourd)

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